• Super Admin
• 08 Mar, 2026

LAGOS - Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has slammed Presi­dential Aide, Daniel Bwala, over his comments during an inter­view with Mehdi Hassan, saying that the falsehood displayed by the spokesman is akin to weeping for Nigeria. Atiku, in a statement on Sat­urday signed by his Senior Spe­cial Assistant on Public Commu­nication, Phrank Shaibu, noted that Bwala's political trajectory has been defined less by convic­tion and more by opportunistic merchandising of allegiance. Part of the statement read: "We've read the latest statement issued by Daniel Bwala in the af­termath of his rather embarrass­ing interview with a mixture of suppressed disgust and embar­rassment -- not for ourselves, but for the sheer enthusiasm with which he parades falsehoods as though repetition could some­how elevate them into truth. "Bwala's sudden discovery of courage and rhetorical flourish is rather amusing, especially from someone whose political trajectory has been defined less by conviction and more by op­portunistic merchandising of allegiance. "Since he now appears eager to rewrite history, it is necessary to refresh his memory. "We remain in possession of his message requesting that the Atiku Media Team issue a press statement claiming that Presi­dent Tinubu and his associates were threatening his life. "He was quite insistent that we amplify that narrative at the time. We declined deliber­ately because we recognised it for what it was: a frivolous and opportunistic attempt at politi­cal theatre, consistent with his long-established penchant for turning politics into a market­place where loyalty is traded like a commodity. "He should therefore spare Nigerians the moral lectures about courage and conviction. The record speaks for itself. "His attempt to recast the Mehdi Hassan interview as some heroic act of intellectual bravery is equally amusing. Anyone who watched that exchange objective­ly saw something quite different. "The interviewer method­ically dismantled the talking points he came armed with and exposed, one after the other, the contradictions between his past statements and his present pos­ture. "Bwala was confronted with his own words about President Tinubu -- statements he once made with remarkable certain­ty -- only to retreat into the tired refuge that "it was politics." "But it is both wicked and mor­ally bankrupt to dismiss matters of grave national consequence as mere politics. The wastage of thousands of Nigerian lives to in­security over the past two years cannot be brushed aside with that cynical refrain. To trivialise such human tragedy as "politics" is nothing short of wickedness, an admission of abysmal failure, and sheer madness. "He struggled visibly to rec­oncile those statements with his current role defending the same administration he once criticised so vigorously. When confronted with documented criticisms from credible organisations re­garding governance failures, he resorted not to evidence or argu­ment but to the lazy dismissal of calling them "fake news." "At several points, the inter­viewer's persistence reduced his defence of both his principal and the government's record to a series of evasions and rhetorical detours. "What Nigerians witnessed was not the fearless demolition of hostile journalism he now imagines, but the uncomfort­able spectacle of a spokesperson struggling to reconcile shifting loyalties with inconvenient facts. "In truth, the interview tore through the carefully construct­ed narrative he attempted to pres­ent and left both his arguments and the government's talking points in tatters. "Bwala boasts about being willing to appear before any interviewer anywhere in the world. But the challenge is not appearing on every television platform across the globe; the real challenge is defending the indefensible. " Source: https://independent.ng/mehdi-hassan-interview-weep-not-for-bwala-weep-for-nigeria-atiku/